Man gets lab-made windpipe

STOCKHOLM: A 36-year-old man who had tracheal cancer has received a new lab-made windpipe seeded with his own stem cells in a procedure in Sweden they call the first successful attempt of its kind, officials said Thursday.

The Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm said the surgery was performed on June 9, and that the patient is on his way to a "full recovery". He was released from a hospital on Friday.

Karolinska said the patient, whose late stage cancer had almost fully blocked his windpipe, had no other options since no suitable donor windpipes were available. Professor Paolo Macchiarini , who has also involved in previous windpipe transplants, said the surgery at Karolinska "is the first synthetic tissue engineered windpipe that has been successfully transplanted."

To perform the surgery, an international team lead by Macchiarini built a scaffold and a bioreactor to seed it with the patient's stem cells. New cells to line and cover the windpipe were then grown on the scaffold for two days before it was transplanted.

"Because the cells used to regenerate the trachea were the patient's own, there has been no rejection of the transplant and the patient is not taking (anti-rejection ) drugs," Karolinska said in a statement.